Wednesday, September 16, 2015

When Mr. Los Angeles Leather 2015, Patrick Smith, gave his 90-second speech at the International Mr. Leather contest in Chicago this year, he spoke on something he cared deeply about.

"The speech celebrated the progress we have made in the
Western world, but it also called attention to the fact that things are
very difficult for LGBT people in many other areas," Smith tells The Advocate.The 90-second speech comes on the final day of the contest,
which has taken place every year since 1979. At 91 seconds, the
microphone shuts off. The speech is followed by a physique show where
contestants strut onstage in leather jockstraps and harnesses.

When Smith won, he knew he had to do something important
with the platform the title offers. "I wanted to actually walk the walk
and not just pay lip service to these issues," he says. "Uganda was a
natural choice given all of the attention it's been getting for its
recent legislative actions against LGBT people."

Uganda has a dark history regarding its LGBT citizens. In
early 2014, antigay President Yoweri Museveni signed into law the
infamous Anti-Homosexuality Act, dubbed the "jail the gays" bill, which was struck down six months later by
the nation's high court (because of a procedural issue, not its
content). But homophobia still runs rampant in the east African nation. A
glaring example of the animus came when Ugandan newspaper Rolling Stonepublished the names of Ugandan LGBT activists with the headline, "Hang Them." Homosexuality remains criminalized in Uganda.

In many ways, Uganda is the antithesis of Smith's leather
culture, which celebrates sexuality in open, public ways. "I was
actually encouraged not to go [to Uganda] by a good number of people,"
Smith says. "They were concerned for my safety, which is understandable,
but I felt this was something very important for me to do."

Smith, who financed his own trip, met with some of Uganda's
most prominent activists to learn about the daily lives of LGBT people
there and figure out what more could be done to help. He interviewed Frank Mugisha, who won the JFK Human Rights Award in 2011.

"He's very warm, open, and candid," Smith says. Mugisha told
him about his experience with a suicidal boy who reached out to him.
Risking a possible entrapment situation, Mugisha counseled the child.

"This boy had been told by his friends, in church, and in
the media that same-sex attraction was wrong and sinful, and felt he had
no other choice than to take his life," Smith says. "Dr. Mugisha talked
with him for hours, and over the next several days and weeks, and he
didn't kill himself."

Smith also met Rev. Mark Kiyimba,
a Ugandan LGBT activist who leads the Unitarian Universalist Church in
the capital city of Kampala. Kiyimba preaches that homosexuality is
compatible with Christianity — a bold campaign in a country like Uganda.
As The New York Times and others have reported, the
fierce wave of antigay sentiment and legislation in Uganda is partly
due to the work of American Christian right activists. Some of them
spoke at a 2009 Kampala conference that, according to Stephen Langa, the
Ugandan organizer of the event, was about "the gay agenda — that whole
hidden and dark agenda."

While Smith's interviews and meetings were impactful, what
affected him the most was seeing Uganda's antigay laws carried out. "The
day I was leaving, news broke that Ugandan football manager Chris
Mubiru was convicted under the country's sodomy law, which carries with
it an 18-year prison sentence. Actually being there in that country when
the story broke felt much different than reading it from afar."

According to Ugandan newspaper The Observer, the state prosecutor asked the court to give Mubiru a sentence of life imprisonment
because his actions were "against the cultural norms." Smith says, "It
really hit home that this is the reality for thousands of LGBT people in
Africa, and it could happen to any one of them."

Smith isn't the first Mr. L.A. Leather to use the platform
for good. One of Smith's best friends, Eric Paul Leue, won Mr. L.A.
Leather 2014. Leue has spent the past year educating gay and bi men
across the United States and Europe on pre-exposure prophylaxis, or
PrEP.

Leue is the director of sexual health and advocacy at
Kink.com, a leather, fetish, and BDSM porn studio based in San
Francisco. Leue estimates that he has been to over 70 cities and held
more than 55 PrEP panels so far.

"Fighting HIV and AIDS has always come naturally to us,
because when you're into stuff like bondage, flogging, extended bondage,
S&M, fisting, you have to be comfortable talking about the body and
about your limits," Leue says. "So talking about HIV even in the early
days of the epidemic came naturally to us."

Smith agrees, saying the title of International Mr. Leather
has "been a service-oriented title for quite some time now. In the
beginning — 37 years ago — it was mostly about sex appeal. But once the
AIDS crisis hit, you saw a new wave of titleholders who were more
dedicated to community service." But Marlon Morales, chair of Los Angeles Leather Pride, said
the focus on community service is not a feature of the organizations
that choose the winners. "We [the L.A. Leather Coalition] never ask the
winners to do anything specific," Morales says. "To win, you just have
to be approachable, charistmatic, and sexy — we don't shy away from
that, we're a very sex-positive community." Morales says that the trend
of titleholders giving back is because "that's the people that win. If
you go back and see past winners, both of Mr. L.A. Leather and
International Mr. Leather, a lot of them come from backgrounds of
activism. Some of the greatest activists have come out of the leather
and fetish communities."

Now that he's back in the States, Smith will continue to use
his title as International Mr. Leather to raise awareness about the
situation of LGBT people in Africa. "I really think we need to become
more internationally focused," he says. "While there is always still
work to do at home, we have it pretty good in the U.S., and it's time to
help the sexual minorities overseas who are really struggling."

Project Everyone - Global Goals 8.DECENT WORK & ECONOMIC GROWTH
"By placing your gifts and talents at service of the greater good, you
become a link in the chain of happiness. Joy, prosperity and love pass
through you to reach the other. You begin to feel guided and led by
something greater than you. But that’s not possible if you remain
isolated, wanting to do everything your way. You have to make yourself
into a link in the chain, which you do by asking: ‘How can I serve?’
That’s how you become a channel of happiness." ‪#‎FlordoDia‬‪#‎GlobalGoals‬‪#‎MetasdoMilênio‬‪#‎SriPremBaba‬